To a large extent the manner in which individuals view, assimilate, and traverse information on the Internet has remained unchanged for over a decade. Information is encoded in a hypertext language, such as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and it includes intra-document or inter-document links represented as Uniform Resource Locator (URL sometimes called Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)) links within the HTML. The information can be linked across the globe over the Internet using the URL's in what is commonly known as the World-Wide Web (WWW).
Although security, content, operational feature, and performance improvements have been made, the basic paradigm within which information is viewed and navigated within WWW browsers has remained the same for over a decade. The model is a two dimensional view of the information without any proximity-based relationships being capable of being adequately depicted and represented.
For example, suppose a brainstorming session was to be captured and depicted as a document or set of information on the WWW using a conventional browser. In the brainstorming session, the physical placement of information relative to other information is of significance. In fact, an entire room rather than a single sheet of paper is used or can be used in the session. A traditional browser cannot and would not be capable of showing these proximity-based relationships in a manner that it is actually witnessed from the perspective of a participant or a viewer to the actual brainstorming session. Part of this problem stems from the dual dimensionality of the WWW browser paradigm and the other part of the problem stems from lack of adequate metadata to support more intuitive information navigation.
Thus, what are needed are techniques, which allow for improved information representations and navigation capabilities.